The Bedlam Detective

by Stephen Gallagher

  “Without the full complement of vehicles, there was insufficient hauling power for all of the gear. We crew watched from the rail as a hasty conference was held to determine what should be taken and what left behind. Sir Owain ordered the erection of a canvas gazebo so that his wife and child might have shade. And there they sat, on drawing-room chairs in their linen and buttons and lace, waving away mosquitoes like abandoned French royalty.

  “A number of boxes were finally separated out for leaving behind. These were stacked up on the shore with a net thrown over them. For all I know, they’re standing there still.

  “Sir Owain and his family were to ride in a sprung observation car that was towed by one of the engines. It had a sumptuous interior and a daybed, and various private facilities. He’d designed it himself and had it constructed at the Great Western works in Swindon, and shipped it out in advance of the expedition.

  “They went without a smile, a wave, or even a look back at us. The great steam cars led the way, huffing and roaring like monsters, breaking down jungle as they went, while the camaradas walked behind with the mules. The pace was such that the mules had no problem keeping up. Even when the caravan had passed from our view we were able to track their progress by the plumes from the steam cars’ smokestacks, rising above the trees. When it came time for us to leave on the next tide, their smoke was still within sight.”

  Wilder took a moment. Sebastian wondered how often he thought on these images. The master’s mate seemed to have been drawn into his own tale and it was almost as if, in his mind, he was back there now. Then:

  “Our orders were to sail on down the coast to the mouth of the Amazon. We were to travel up the river as far as our ship could safely navigate, and then send a boat party onward to meet the expedition at the end of its journey. I was assigned to lead the greeting party. Through circumstances outside our control, we reached the point of confluence some fifteen days late.

  “It was of no matter. Sir Owain and his people had not yet appeared. The captain sent me inland to look for them. I took my men some way farther up the tributary river and we made camp at a convenient spot, where we settled down to wait.

  “Days passed, and then weeks. I stopped expecting them to appear around the river’s bend at any hour and was gripped by an increasing certainty that something terrible must have happened. As our presence became known in the area, Indians came to our camp and showed us items that had washed downstream. A straw hat. Some rope. A champagne bottle with its label washed off-it had miraculously survived being smashed in the rapids.

  “I sent a message back to my ship, asking what I should do. The captain’s reply came back. He said that we were being paid to wait, so I should wait. So we did.

  “Finally, the survivors came floating out of the jungle on a crude raft. There were only two of them. Sir Owain, and one other. They’d been deserted by the camaradas and their boats and equipment were lost. Everyone else in the party had perished. Sir Owain’s wife and child were dead. The other man was limping on a gangrenous foot.”

  Evangeline said, “Who was the other man?”

  “The botanist, I think. Sir Owain was delirious and raving, and both had to be carried. We got them back to the ship as quickly as we were able, where our ship’s doctor dealt with them as best he could. Sir Owain was terribly thin but seemed physically intact, though he raved and rambled and made little sense, and eventually had to be doped and tied to his bunk.

  “That was after he’d got hold of a gun from somewhere and run to the stern, blasting away at the sea and swearing that there were great serpents following us. It was a tragic sight.”

  Sebastian said, “Was anything actually there?”

  Wilder shook his head. “Nothing at all,” he said. “Over the next few days, Sir Owain seemed to recover. He was more or less rational by the time we reached port. As his mind cleared he asked for ink and paper and began to write furiously. Our ship’s doctor spent a lot of time with him, reading the pages as they came.”

  “What of the other man?”

  “That same doctor saved most of his foot. Our ship’s carpenter made him a crutch. Neither man would say much about their ordeal. They acted like men walking away from a battle with most of their scars on the inside.”

  Evangeline said, “Do you remember your doctor’s name? Can we locate him?”

  “The botanist? It was Doctor Summerfield, I think. Or Smithfield. Something like that.”

  “I meant your own ship’s doctor.”

  “Oh, him,” Wilder said. “Of course. That was Sibley. Doctor Hubert Sibley.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  So that was Wilder’s tale. He walked them out, through long corridors in need of repair, emerging into a part of the college that felt to Sebastian like a massive Roman cloister. Greenwich was a place of tides and fog, and the fog had filled the cloister up while they’d been inside. The air hung still, and in this stillness was a creaking sound. It came from large iron lamps that hung from plaster roses in the ceiling of the colonnade, moving slightly under some imperceptible influence.

  Sebastian thanked him, and Evangeline offered her hand and said, as Wilder took it and bowed his head, “Mister Wilder. May I ask-”

  “Yes?”

  “We were told that injury ended your time at sea. Yet you seem …”

  She seemed unsure of how to put her question, but he understood immediately.

  “Without any obvious impediment?” he said. “I understand. The air by the river was thick with mosquitoes and biting flies. As we waited for the party to appear, all in our camp were laid low in their turn. My infection took a long time to appear and even longer to leave. Eventually I recovered my strength, only to find that my balance had been permanently affected. Now I can’t take the motion of a boat. Any boat. The sea crossing home was perfect hell.”

  “So it left no direct mark,” she said, “and yet it keeps you from the life you wanted. My sympathies.”

  “Thank you,” Wilder said, and belatedly realized that he had not yet released her hand. He blushed.

  Sebastian and Evangeline went on their way. Sebastian was thinking about those mighty steam cars, their component parts forged in Sir Owain’s foundries and assembled in his shipyards, now swallowed up into the jungle and gone. Somewhere they rusted, the bones of the dead scattered all around them.

  But what a sight they must have made as they set off! Like Robert’s dime magazine airships and steam-driven men and ironclads of the plains, made real for this dawning age.

  Once he and Evangeline were out in the open, they could see how dense the fog had become. Sebastian offered his arm, and Evangeline took it. With some hesitation, he sensed, but she took it all the same.

  As they made their slow way toward the West Gate, Evangeline said, “There’s a photograph of all the expedition members in Sir Owain’s book. His wife and child were not among them.”

  “That picture was faked in a studio,” Sebastian said. “Like all the others. If you look closely you can see the same man twice, in different whiskers.”

  “So he conjured his dead loved ones all the way out of existence? What did Sir Owain think he was doing?”

  “Rejecting the reality of his situation. He finds it too terrible to contemplate, so he’d have us believe in another.”

  “That makes him more of a rogue than a madman.”

  “It’s madness if he believes it as well.”

  As the pillars and wrought iron of the West Gate took shape in the fog before them, Sebastian said, “How goes it with your employers?”

  “I’ve been pleading a recurrent indisposition,” she said. “When concern for my health gives way to irritation at my absences, I’ll stage a quiet recovery.”

  “I’m surprised at men of the law being so easily misled.”

  “The men of the law don’t concern themselves with the likes of me. I only need to fool our clerk. He’s a terrier with the males. But if a woman so much as touches his arm, he stamme
rs. I’ve had him stammering a lot.”

  “Miss Bancroft!” Sebastian said, feigning shock and causing her to smile.

  Although it was only a short walk to the boat pier, in the fog it was a distance to be covered slowly and with caution. The few people they saw were anonymous shapes, emerging and fading again like hulks at sea. One cart went by, its driver dismounted and leading his horse by the bridle, rapping his way along the edge of the pavement with a heavy staff like a blinded pilgrim. After its passing bulk and the noisy shaking of its iron-bound wheels over stone … silence.

  The pier gates were closed and locked, and a notice hung upon them. Wisps of fog curled around it. It was as Sebastian had expected. No steamer captain would take passengers onto the river in such conditions. Disaster was guaranteed.

  But Evangeline seemed surprised. “Oh,” she said. “Are we stranded? What are we to do?”

  “Don’t be concerned,” Sebastian said. “We can cross under the river and pick up a North Greenwich train.”

  “A tunnel.”

  “Right there.” He pointed to where, visible on the embankment a few yards away, there stood a round building with a domed roof. It resembled some moon-bound projectile lifted straight from the engravings in a Jules Verne romance, a brick-and-glass bullet seated firmly on the earth.

  They went across to the building, which housed lift machinery and a stairway. As they waited in the white-tiled rotunda, Sebastian could see that Evangeline was not happy at the prospect of a descent.

  To distract her mind, he said, “We should look for this botanist. Summerfield or Smithfield. Whatever the man’s name is.”

  “If he’s alive. And in a fit state to speak.”

  The lift arrived from below. Some half-dozen people emerged, but only Sebastian and Evangeline boarded. Early in the morning, the foot tunnel would be choked with a press of workers heading from their homes in Greenwich to the docklands across the river. All would flood back again at the end of the day. The wood-paneled lift was of a size that could carry eighty or more at a time.

  The old-soldier operator waited less than half a minute, and then closed the doors. During their fifty-foot descent the cage seemed to falter, like a cart rolling over a bump, and its overhead light flickered. The operator showed no reaction, but Evangeline drew in a breath.

  Then the doors opened, and there it stretched before them. The quarter-mile tunnel was circular, lined with white glazed tiles, lit from above by electricity, and fog-free. Because of the way that it angled down under the river and then climbed again after the halfway point, it was not possible to see to its far end. A dozen people waited to enter the lift. More could be seen down the tunnel’s length.

  They started to walk. Something in Evangeline’s attitude betrayed her and Sebastian said, “Do shut-in places make you nervous? You should have told me. Take my arm again, if it reassures you.”

  “I should not,” Evangeline said.

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t imagine your wife thinking it proper.”

  “My wife’s American. She cares more about the way things are than the way they look.”

  “What have you told her about me?”

  “Everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Nothing you need feel uncomfortable about. She works in a hospital. There’s very little she hasn’t heard.”

  He wanted Evangeline to think well of Elisabeth, and not to imagine disapproval. He said, “And but for her encouragement I might never have sought you out.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  Evangeline said, “I’d like to meet her.”

  “You shall,” Sebastian said. “Look. You can see the tunnel’s lowest point ahead of us. When we reach that, you’ll be able to look up and see the far end of it.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” she said. “Please. Where did you meet?”

  “In Philadelphia. I was working for the Pinkertons then. It seems like a lifetime ago. I was alone in a new city and a long way from anywhere I could think of as home. A woman once told me that a man who can dance is always going to be in demand. So I went for dancing lessons, once a week at the Stratford Hotel. The dancing teacher’s name was Alicia and Elisabeth was her best friend. She played piano for the dancing sometimes. Although her instrument was the euphonium.”

  “Seriously?”

  “It’s a sound you have to learn to love.”

  “And you did.”

  “Never quite managed that much.”

  At the tunnel’s lowest point, just ahead of them, the slabs gleamed wetly. The tunnel floor was of great oblong slabs of cut stone, closely jointed.

  Evangeline said, “What about your son?”

  “Robert. How do I describe him? I won’t call him troubled, because he’s a happy young man. He’s bright, intelligent, perceptive, and strange. In a way that endears him to all who know him, and perplexes anyone who doesn’t. And the world is full of people who don’t. But we finally found a place where they would understand him, feed his mind, and show him how to understand others.”

  “He’ll have a lot to thank you for.”

  “Thanks aren’t required. Although it hasn’t been easy. When we landed in England we had just our rags and our bags, as Elisabeth put it. But we manage. Sir James got me cheap, and he knows it.”

  At which point, without any warning at all, the tunnel’s lights failed.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The darkness was sudden, utter, and as unrelieved as it was unexpected. Someone farther down the tunnel screamed. Evangeline gasped, “Oh, Lord,” and Sebastian said, “Don’t be afraid. Take my arm.”

  “Where?”

  “Here,” he said, finding her hand and guiding it. When her fingers brushed his coat, she clutched at him. He said, “The power has failed, that’s all. It might help if you close your eyes.”

  “It doesn’t,” she said after a moment. “What can we do?”

  “Stay calm. We’re not trapped. We’re in no danger.”

  “There’s no air.”

  “The air’s the same as before. You’re just breathing too hard. I’m going to follow the wall to the end of the tunnel.”

  He stretched out his hand and took one or two cautious sideways steps toward the tunnel wall, drawing her along with him at a shuffle. When his fingertips made contact with the tile, he felt a relief that he took care not to communicate. Reason was one thing. But this fear was a primitive urge and knew no logic.

  With the wall to guide them, he started to move forward. Somewhere way ahead of them, someone found a match and struck a light.

  “There,” Sebastian said. “Look.”

  The match flame burned for a short while, giving them something to focus on like a distant, dying star, but the flame did not last. It burned all the way down and then, like a star, it fell.

  Evangeline said, “I can’t do this, Mister Becker.”

  “You can. You’re doing well. Don’t faint on me.”

  “I’m trying.”

  They kept on moving. People were shouting now, many of them calling for help. Someone else-perhaps the woman who’d screamed when the lights had first gone out-began to panic and shout. Evangeline clutched at Sebastian’s arm more tightly.

  “It’s all right,” Sebastian said. “Someone losing control of themselves, that’s all. There’s no good reason for it.”

  But Evangeline was beginning to shake, and he quickly had to put his arm around her waist to prevent her from sinking to the ground. This caused him a dilemma, because he couldn’t touch the wall for guidance and hold Evangeline up as well. He shouted back over his shoulder, “Madam! You’re in no danger! Just find the wall and follow it!”

  But the woman only screamed back, “Please, sir, help me!”

  “I am already helping someone!”

  He doubted whether she heard him. Everyone seemed to be calling now, expressing their fears and not listening to each other.


  Close to his ear, Evangeline said, “Sebastian. I know it makes no sense. But I feel something watching us.”

  “Nothing’s watching us. Nothing’s there.”

  “I know that. But it is.”

  “Hold on to me. Tight as you can. We’re well on our way out of here.”

  She steadied herself and put one arm around him, which freed him to reach again for the wall. That one point of reference was enough to give him the confidence to start forward, though not without continuing hesitation. Though he knew for a fact that the way ahead was clear, he fought against a growing conviction that they were about to walk into some obstacle at any moment.

  Evangeline said, “How will we get out?”

  “They have stairs,” Sebastian said.

  And then: “Look.”

  He’d seen the first rays from the light of a lantern in the stairwell ahead of them, and even as he spoke the official carrying it came around and stepped into view. With that one point of reference, all of Sebastian’s inclination to dread abated.

  The official held the lantern high and called out, “Everybody all right down there? Come toward me.”

  Seconds later, the electric lighting came back on and everyone was caught in whatever attitude they’d assumed in the darkness. Most standing, some dropped to their knees, a very few people crawling on the ground. A long way off, one woman lay in a flat-out faint.

  Evangeline was still holding on to him. He was still supporting her. Self-consciously, they disengaged and moved apart.

  “See?” Sebastian said. “Nothing there.”

  Evangeline nodded. Of course not. But that was not the point.

  The official said, “Can I ask you to use the stairs, please? Until the electric can be relied on.”

  Sebastian said, “There’s a woman back there in some distress. Didn’t you hear her?”

  “Yes, sir,” the official said, and started forward.

  Instead of entering the lift, they turned to climb the stairs. The iron stairway curved up and around in a rising spiral between the central shaft and the outer wall. More lanterns had been set out to light the way, although with the power restored these were no longer needed.